Retrospective

As Education Week marks its 20th anniversary,
here are some of the people, events, and issues that were making news
20 years ago.

Selected stories from April 28, 1982:

Narrowing Gap: The gap in educational achievement between
black and white students has closed considerably over the past decade,
a period when many programs designed to correct social and educational
imbalances between the races were implemented, according to a new analysis conducted by two
University of North Carolina researchers. The researchers, Lyle V.
Jones and Nancy W. Burton, emphasize that it is not possible to
establish whether those programs and other changes—desegregation,
for example—that occurred during the 1970s were responsible for
the improvement in achievement.

Head Start: Declaring Head Start part of the Reagan
administration's "social safety net," Secretary of Health and Human
Services Richard S. Schweiker announces plans to convert all summer Head Start
programs to full-time status. Mr. Schweiker's April 15 announcement
came as 5,000 educators and parent activists gathered in Detroit for
the ninth annual National Head Start Association training
conference.

Grade Dispute: The Dade County, Fla., school board decides
not to overrule the C in
conduct given to a student whose father threatened legal action if
the grade is not changed. The parent, Gerald Tobin, a lawyer, is
distressed because the low grade marred his daughter's straight-A
record. The issue, Mr. Tobin argues, involves not only the academic
record of his daughter, however, but also the rights of Florida
students to demand hearings on grades they believe to be undeserved or
unfair.

Secular Humanism: A Colorado state lawmaker's fight against
what he says is the teaching of the "anti-God religion" of secular
humanism in public schools waged in the legislature since the
spring of 1981 could soon be continued in court. Rep. Robert J.
Stephenson, a Republican from Colorado Springs who chairs the House
education committee, charges that the schools are teaching secular
humanism in violation of the state constitution, which prohibits
allocating tax dollars to districts that promote religion.

A Touch of Humor: In a chilly subterranean assembly hall in
Atlanta's World Congress Center, 15,000 members of the National School
Boards Association clustered in semi-darkness to hear a speech by Art Buchwald. The
Pulitzer Prize- winning humor columnist was the last scheduled speaker
in the four-day annual NSBA convention that concerned itself with such
sobering matters as federal education budget cuts, tuition tax credits
for private schools, desegregation, and censorship of textbooks.

Tax Exemptions and Race: The U.S. Supreme Court breaks a
three-month silence on the issue of tax exemptions for private
schools that discriminate on the basis of race, announcing that it
will decide two related cases next fall. At the same time, the court
appoints William T. Coleman Jr., a Washington lawyer and a former U.S.
secretary of transportation, to argue the position abandoned in January
by the Reagan administration—that the Internal Revenue Service
has the authority, under existing law, to deny the exemptions.

Young Writers: Children as young as 6 years old are eager and able to begin writing the
day they start school, says a university researcher testifying in
Houston before the National Commission on Excellence in Education. And
youngsters who are exposed to the writing process early in their school
careers may develop important reading and thinking skills more rapidly
and easily than those who do not begin writing until they are further
along.

Vol. 21, Issue 32, Page 6

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